A dagger appeared in his throat before he could correct the mistake. One moment his neck was intact and the next seven inches of steel protruded from his windpipe, blood spraying in arterial pulses as he dropped the gun and grabbed at the blade with both hands, his eyes wide with shock and the dawning understanding that he was already dead. He collapsed sideways and the gurgling sounds that replaced his voice were the only eulogy he got.
I turned toward the source of the throw.
Lori stood on a fire escape twenty feet away, silhouetted against the streetlight with her hair loose around her shoulders and wearing black that made her almost invisible in shadow. She had another dagger in her hand, twirled it once with casual and deadly economy, then dropped down to street level with feline grace.
“You're welcome,” she said.
“I wasn't aware I'd asked for help.”
“You were about to get shot. Seemed rude to let that happen.” She walked past me, knelt beside the dying gunman, and retrieved her dagger with clinical efficiency, wiping the blade clean on his jacket as she stood. “Besides, I need information. The others are disposable.”
I looked at the three unconscious men, then back at her. “Information implies you're planning something specific.”
“Always am.” She moved to the first man I'd dropped — the one with the cracked skull — pulled a second dagger from somewhere I couldn't identify, and pressed the point against his throat hard enough to draw blood. “This one's useless. Head trauma makes for unreliable interrogation.” She slit his throat without any particular expression, casual and efficient, the way someone might gut a fish. Then she moved to the second man, assessed him with the same cold calculation, and drove her blade through his heart with surgical speed. “That one would've talked too much,” she said. “Tried to bargain. Complete waste of time.”
The third man was starting to wake. He groaned, tried to move, and found Lori's boot on his chest pinning him down. She smiled, pressed her dagger against his cheek, and traced its edge down to his jaw with the patience of someone who had nowhere more important to be.
“Hello, darling,” she purred. “You and I are going to have a conversation.”
He tried to struggle. She increased pressure on his chest and drove her blade through his hand, pinning it to the pavement. His scream echoed off the warehouse walls and she waited it out with perfect composure, waiting until it subsided to a pained and breathless whimpering before she spoke again.
“Better. Now. Who hired you?”
“Fuck you.”
She twisted the blade and he screamed again. “Wrong answer. Try again.”
“I don't know names. Just orders. Just money.”
“What were the orders?”
“Rough up the investigator. Take his evidence. Make sure he stops asking questions.” He was crying now, the pain and fear making his words slur. “Someone wanted him scared off. Wanted whatever he's digging into to stay buried.”
“Who's the someone?” I asked.
“I told you, I don't bloody know. We get calls through a drop phone. Money appears in an account. We do the job. That's it.”
“A badly executed plan,” Lori observed, glancing at the bodies surrounding us. “Your team's dead and you're about to join them unless you give me something useful.”
“What do you want?”
“Names. Locations. Who pays you. How you get contacted.” She pulled the blade from his hand and positioned it against his throat. “And don't lie. I can always tell when people lie.”
He talked. Gave her everything he had — dead drops, burner phone numbers, bank account details, descriptions of the voice that gave orders, details about an organisation that paid well for muscle and asked no questions about targets. Lori memorised it all with the same focused attention I would have used, and when he finished she slit his throat as calmly as she'd done the others.
Blood sprayed across pavement already slick with it. She stood, wiped her daggers clean, and sheathed them somewhere I couldn't track despite watching her every movement.
“Remind me not to piss you off,” I said.
She laughed. “Most people don't learn that lesson until it's far too late.” She surveyed the bodies around us with the comfortable detachment of someone consulting a grocery list. “We should go. Police response time in this area runs about eight minutes. We've got three left.”
“You killed four people.”
“Four if you count the one bleeding out from your tackle. He wasn't going to make it to hospital regardless.” She tilted her head. “Is that a problem?”
“Should it be?”
“Depends. Are you going to report this, make a statement, play the concerned citizen?” Her smile sharpened. “Or are you going to accept that some problems can't be solved legally and keep moving?”
